size of my first high school's cafeteria. The windows, the walls, everything was draped with a heavy white photographer's drapes in a slight blue-tone. Like a massive photo shoot from all angles of something immensely large.
I was on a platform at one end of the room elevated at a height of about 3', I guess it was more like a
pedestal really. And my muscle tone was as perfect as Michelangelo's David -- not like a human at all. I was just standing there, and these people I had never known before would each come up to me separately and tell me something positive about me, then put a single feather into one of my wings.
I'm not the sort of person that normally just takes a compliment. I normally blow things off and think that people are just being insincere -- there've been many times in my life where people have tried to control me....
This was different somehow, I did not know these people, but I could tell they were being earnest. More of them than I could see, each holding a single feather that was burgundy, or irridescent copper, or pidgeon's blood red, or the color rose madder... (Which is sort of a bronzey-rose, like the oxidation of copper from an acetalyne torch after it has been heated to a certain temperature and quenched in water).
The people were every-people. All colors, all ages, all walks of life, dressed in nuetral white. And I just stood there, not knowing what to say, but knowing that they were saying goodbye and that was why they were building my wings. It made me feel uncomfortable, and a bit wistful. There was both pain and hope in the words.
The wings ranged between about 180% -- 215% of
my heighth at various stages of their building, which, I think, was the reason for the pedestal. (So that I would not break them by standing on the ground). Each feather pinched like the prick of a
16 gauge piercing needle, and there must have been hundreds of them. But the pain didn't last,
it just happened every time that a feather was added, and stopped. No soreness afterwards, like
with a new piercing.
No adrenaline either. Just the kindness, and a small prick.
And I knew that they were preparing me for a long trip somewhere, I don't know where.
I couldn't say anything, I didn't have the right words and knew that it would be impolite to do anything but to listen. Because it was my job to listen.... Because, by listening I was saying the same things back to the people who said these things.
I guess that that was when I realized that these were things that may have been true about me, in that place, but they were also things that these people desparately wanted to hear about themselves from others -- that they were saying to themselves... That I wasn't really a person, that somehow I'd gone beyond being a person and had
transformed to something else that only resembled a person, an overly perfect looking person who didn't feel anywhere near perfect.
These things said to me were things that had never been said to these people, and I realized that the feathers were -prayers-, which was why they resembled blood.
I felt a little angry.... Not really a primal sort of angry, more of a colicky angry like, "What happened to my real body? What about what I want?" -- the "I-me" sort of thoughts that are sometimes referred to as "monkey mind" in Buddist teaching.
But then, as soon as I was able to determine that I felt angry, I realized, that I was being given the gift of a higher purpose, which I had the choice of taking or denying.
And I realized that there are many parts of my life that I have been holding on to that I really need to let go of. That I really needed to listen, more than anything else in the world, and to stop being afraid.
(This was when I woke up and realized I'd better run or I'd be late to a dentist appointment).
